The Five Minute Lunch Challenge

Actually, waking up with a tarantula in your bed is worse, but meal prep is a very close second.

I make lunches for the three apples of my eye (who incidentally will not actually eat an apple in their lunches unless it has been prepared like it’s going to be the centrepiece of the midnight buffet on a cruise ship, and then coated in just enough cinnamon to disguise the dreaded “OMG it’s BROWN” panic, but not so much that “it’s too cinnamon-y and I choked to death”).

Our school has the balanced day system, so they basically eat two lunches a day. Something about children not fainting or something. In my day you waited until you got home to faint, or used it as an excuse to nap in the nurse’s office. But now that seeing a nurse inside a school is rather like a unicorn sighting, I guess the goal is to keep the children upright. Whatever the reason, I find packing six meals for three kids very stressful.

Smiling while packing lunches? Now there’s your unicorn sighting!

When the people at iÖGO nanö asked me to participate in The Five Minute Lunch Challenge my family members began choking and turning purple. After I inspected their mouths for excess cinnamon I realized that they were laughing at the idea of me trying to do anything in five minutes, let alone pack the lunches.

I probably spend a good twenty minutes each morning absentmindedly wandering between the kitchen and the basement as if I am expecting a food court to have been built downstairs overnight. Add another ten minutes of chiseling food spills out of their lunch bags that they “forgot about,” five minutes of playing container tetris trying to get everything to fit into the bags, and another five minutes of googling whether packing deli meat is the equivalent of tucking cigarettes into my child’s backpack.

That’s a lot of minutes, and no actual food has been packed.

Do you think I could meet the challenge? Personally I am just proud of myself that I managed to fend off my kids during filming, because they swooped in like vultures and immediately ate all my props. I clearly need a closed set with a full security team next time.

I would tell you to check out the other bloggers who tried this challenge over at HuffPost Canada Parents, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that I put them all to shame. Seriously. Don’t look. I’m embarrassed for them and their beautiful kitchens. And I definitely did not get shown up by a child who is apparently some kind of lunch-making prodigy.

Disclosure – I have been compensated and was provided with complimentary products for the purpose of making this video for iÖGO nanö.